Scientists were able to predict how much pain people were feeling by looking at images of their brains, according to a new study from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Don't Miss This

WEDNESDAY, April 10, 2013 — What does pain look like? Scientists may now have a better idea, and they may someday be able to use the information to diagnose pain in cases where a person is unable to communicate — in infants, for example, or someone who is paralyzed.

For the first time, researchers were able to predict how much pain people were in by looking at special brain scans called fMRIs, according to a new study conducted at the University of Colorado Boulder and other institutions. The findings were published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Currently, pain can only be measured based on a patient’s description and on pain ratings on a scale of 1 to 10. The new research may lead to development of reliable tests doctors could use to objectively measure a patient’s pain.

"Right now, there's no clinically acceptable way to measure pain and other emotions other than to ask a person how they feel," said Tor Wager, PhD, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at CU-Boulder and lead author of the paper, in a press release.

"We absolutely need to ask people how they feel, and we need to believe their answers," Dr. Wager wrote in an e-mail interview. "Pain is by definition a subjective experience, and it will remain so. What we can provide is objective measures for some of the brain correlates, or 'ingredients' of pain."

For the study, researchers used computer data-mining techniques to comb through fMRIs of 114 brains that were taken when subjects were exposed to pain, in this case, when they were exposed to different levels of heat ranging from warm to painfully hot.

The scientists fed the data into a computer and identified a consistent pattern that showed a neurological marker in the brain for pain.

"We found a pattern across multiple systems in the brain that is diagnostic of how much pain people feel in response to painful heat," Wager said in the release.

Before conducting the study, researchers thought that if they could find a pain signature in the brain, it would be unique to every individual, so they assumed a person’s pain level could only be predicted based on past images of his or her own brain. But instead the researchers found the brain signature in people experiencing pain was similar among different participants. Identifying this signature allowed them to predict with 90 percent to 100 percent accuracy how much pain a person was having, even without seeing a prior brain scan on that individual.

Physical But Not Emotional Pain

The brain pattern identified by the Colorado researchers represented only physical pain, they said. Other studies have suggested emotional pain may look similar to physical pain in a brain scan, but when researchers looked at scans of people who had just broken up with a significant other, they didn't see the brain signature that was present in those experiencing physical pain.

The researchers are hoping their findings can set the stage for new methods of using brain scans to objectively measure emotional states like anxiety, depression, and anger. Further testing will help them determine whether the neurological signature for pain will hold up when applied to different types of pain, and whether the signature could be used to develop a way to quantify chronic pain.

"The pattern we have found is not a measure of chronic pain, but we think it may be an 'ingredient' of chronic pain under some circumstances,” said Wager in the release. “Understanding the different contributions of different systems to chronic pain and other forms of suffering is an important step towards understanding and alleviating human suffering."

This site complies with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information: verify here.

Advertising Notice

This Site and third parties who place advertisements on this Site may collect and use information about
your visits to this Site and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of
interest to you. If you would like to obtain more information about these advertising practices and to make
choices about online behavioral advertising, please click here.